Friday, October 18, 2013

Wait A Second

My social media feed was abuzz the last few days and especially last night regarding a certain conference. I am a little confused at this point. So let me get this straight.

- A famous pastor writes a book and has a conference that
purports to expose the errors of an enormously broad stream of Christianity
that includes some half a billion professed believers.

- This conference features said famous pastor lumping
together this huge number of Christians ranging from sound and profitable men
to rank apostates and then declaring them heretics, wolves, false prophets and
blasphemers of the Holy Spirit.

- The fanboys of this famous pastor sprinkle social media
with snarky and smug attempts at being clever interspersed with alleged
examples of why every single Christian who can be considered part of this group
is a raving lunatic.

- Many people being slandered in this conference by a man many
of them admire express what I thought was by and large moderate, thoughtful
and sober concern over this conference, not least because it failed to include
a single brother with a different view (brothers that this famous pastor
happily shares a stage with in other venues). Granted there were exceptions but as I said the responses I saw were right on target in tone and content.

- In response many fanboys and followers of the
aforementioned famous pastor feign outrage over people questioning this famous
pastor as if he is the one being attacked.

Huh?

It would be analogous to someone coming up behind you and
sucker punching you and when you turn around and say "What was that for?!" having them accuse you of ad hominem attacks.

I may write more about this later but right now the last few
days of "Christian" social media have resembled a fetid fever swamp
of divisiveness and hatred toward brothers. I feel physically ill at what I
have seen on display. If we as the church are willing to spend this much time, money and effort to slander a huge population of the church, why should we be puzzled that the church is sinfully divided and the world sees Christianity as an archaic, self-righteous and irrelevant joke?

I don't think God is pleased by cutesy tweets and one liners delivered for applause. In fact I am sure of it.